The Locke Foundation's donors

Comment deleted for inappropriate language.

— RTB 

Much of the John Locke Foundation's criticism of Global Warming is encapsulated in the report, "North Carolina Citizen's Guide to Global Warming" prepared by Joel Schwartz of the American Enterprise Institute. AEI received $240,000 from ExxonMobil in 2006 alone.

Simple questions, simple answers.

There are two donors during that period that would fit your definition. One is CEED, the Center for Energy and Economic Development, a nonprofit based in Texas. It gave us a grant of $6,500 in 2001. The other is the Claude R. Lambe Foundation in Kansas, which is a philanthropy associated with the Koch family. It made three grants to JLF during the period, totaling $70,000.

Neither of these donors has funded our work on climate change, which has no underwriter. It is financed by general revenues. The $76,500 cited above amounts to 0.7 percent of JLF revenues received during the period.

The Kochs, by the way, have been donors and activists in the free-market movement for decades. One of the Koch brothers was a Libertarian Party candidate for Vice President in 1980. It is silly to suggest that they support free-market organizations, whether JLF or groups in DC, because of some nefarious conspiracy to discredit global-warming alarmists. A little logic goes a long way.

Now, does it make sense to enact hundreds of millions of dollars a year in higher spending, taxes, and energy prices in North Carolina even though advocates admit these policies won't affect the climate? Is it all right for a state agency to select a left-wing advocacy organization to essentially staff an official state working group, without disclosing its real objectives? Is it all right for this official consultant to state government to propose a long list of taxes and regulations, claim they would create rather than cost many jobs for North Carolinians, and then refuse to supply any documentation or analysis to support such a preposterous claim?

These are the real issues here. They will greatly affect the people of NC. Attempts to change the subject won't work.

To John Hood -

Just to clear the air with the people of NC - will you make public any donors over the past five years who have any ties to coal, utilities, oil, energy, etc.to JLF (and your various entities)?

Are their people, industries, foundations who ARE specifically funding your climate change work?

You are a member of the Coalition for Lobby Reform, don't you believe in full disclosure and transparency?

Why don't some of you folks actually talk to the guys at the Locke Foundation? If you would do that, you'd find out they aren't about money. If they were, they wouldn't be working there.

They write about what they believe in and what they believe in is plainly stated on their website: http://www.johnlocke.org/about/ Their founding principles are that we are a land of liberty (where individual rights matter), a constitutional republic (where gov't is limited), a free market and a free society. Everything they do is consistent with their principles.

And for the record, I don't work there and I'm not a donor.

Ryan, I apologize for sending your readers elsewhere, but I've responded at some length over at Ed Cone's site to the Institute for Southern Studies rant, and don't see the need to rehash everything again here. The link is:

http://edcone.typepad.com/wordup/2007/11/who-pays-the-pi.html#comments

I will add something that I didn't bring out in the previous comments: even if you wanted to take seriously the "Six Degrees of Separation," Illumnati-style argumentation employed here, the $126,500 figure is ridiculous. In most cases, the writer is including the full amount of grants to JLF (none of which had anything to do with our climate-change work, by the way) even though the source is not actually an oil company but is instead a nonprofit for which oil-company revenues are typically a very small percentage. In other words, if the idea was to pursue this honestly, one would figure out the share of revenues of say, the Reason Foundation, derived from oil companies and then multiply that times the grant to JLF.

But this was not serious analysis. This was an attempt to smear, informed by paranoia, and to change the subject by suggesting that "tainted" revenues adding up to less than 2 percent of JLF's revenue during the period motivated us to say something we wouldn't otherwise have. This makes no sense and won't work. The real subject is whether North Carolina will adopt a set of state-level recommendations to increase corporate subsidies, taxes, and energy prices -- a plan that will, everyone admits, affect our future climate not at all.

Yes, nothing to see here. No WAY that industry money funneled to a "think tank" would influence the way they think. Who ever heard of money influencing decisions?

Check this out: John Locke's anti-environment blog was duped by a hoax report meant to out climate change skeptics for their lack of fact-checking and scientific knowledge: http://www.desmogblog.com/anatomy-of-a-dupe-the-john-locke-foundation

I agree. Seriously.

Oh my God! another Vast Right Wing conspiracy! You lefties crack me up. The John Locke Foundation receives funding from groups with ties to the fossil fuel industry and then they have the nerve to criticize some environmental group? I don't think the world is safe anymore.

Funny.

If someone paid them enough, the John Locke Foundation would say the earth is flat.

Look, there's proof! IOWA!

would be the correct answer to your question.